There are some crackpots who are at first so repulsive that one dreams of court-ordered exile, but whose crackpottedness in time becomes such a fascinating and regular feature of politics, one can no longer imagine living without it.
Alan Keyes leaps to mind; he never disappoints, he wafts eloquently in his madness, and we all -- all of us -- are the richer for it.
To wit, we thrilled when he recently lived up to our expectations by demanding, via WorldNetDaily, that the GOP House "move to demand proper forensic examination of the new [birth-certificate] evidence Obama has released." Yet, in this demand there inhered something of the too expected. Could he not do a trifle better?
Well, he already had, only I missed it. Two weekends ago, in the words of People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch, Keyes "urge[d] Congress to impeach President Obama on the grounds that Obama is supporting international interventions in Libya and the Ivory Coast so as to establish a 'precedent' whereby were he were to lose his reelection bid and refuse to 'give up power,' the international community would intervene militarily in the US to keep him in office."
Now that's crackpottedness of the paradigmatic sort. And we love him for it.